#feel free to correct ny grammar

[no-no-no-ahhhh]

So since Monster High might have a come back, and those uninspired dolls have officially been released...

Sus Rasict things Monster High has done

1. White washed an Egyptian character

Cleo looks so white when she's based off of Egyptian royalty. Yall can't even tell me she's tan or anything like that she looks plain white

If you don't think they whitewashed her you can't deny monster high participated in colorism. Cleo our main boo who the audience is supposed to cheer for is lighter then her sister which we are supposed to hate. Her sister is occasional the antagonist.

2. Over sexualize their black character

Yall can try all you want to tell me otherwise but clawdeen was dressed more scandalous then the rest of the dolls. In the anime version of Monster High clawdeen says something along the lines of "One of the cute things about me is my short revealing skirt."

Mattel let that slide by. Many black characters get over sexualized.

https://www.blackburncenter.org/post/2019/02/20/the-historical-roots-of-the-sexualization-of-black-women-and-girls

Can we just stop sexualizing little poc girls. I remember as a child putting clawdeen skirt on her and trying to pull it down a bit , so it wouldn't show too much. When I tried to pull it down it just went down all her legs.

3. Not good at representing indigenous people skin tone.

In MH they do have indigenous based designs but they don't necessarily reflect the way indigenous people look. A little girl can't pick up the doll and say "hey this doll looks like me" and I think all little girls would like to see them self in things they like. Also a lot of poc end up hating that they aren't lighter. It would be nice if they could see their skin represented in a doll.

Dont tell me that oh it wouldn't work with these monsters because the monster doesn't have skin blah blah blah blah. MH has designed black coded vampires and white coded werewolfs before.

Also I'm so tired of companies having so many white people than sprinkling some black people and calling it a day cause they met the "diversity quota". I'm honestly thinking now that they just put Clawdeen in to say they have a poc doll."Look at how diverse we are." If they really where diverse they would not have white washed a Egyptian character in the first place.

4. They just have whitewashed many more characters

First is Gigi Grant, Middle Eastern people can be light skinned but they're are also "tanned" middle eastern people. MH already got a whole ton of white characters. It would not hurt to just give Gigi some melanin.

Another whitewashed character is Marisol Coxi

Her doll and doll art fur/skin is light pink

But in the webisodes she looks like a black coded character

Idk why they changed the way she looks in one media from the other. Just let us have more poc dolls!

Third is Honey Swamp its possible she is simply a lightskined person which is perfectly fine. But it seems like monster high just likes to deny us melanin enriched dolls.

5. The Tiki

They never had a tiki Monster High character that looked like the rest of the MH dolls. Which would have been nice to see but alas it was stolen from us. The tiki where just a plot device for a MH movie Escape from Skull Shores. They don't ever tease the tiki or anything like that, thank goodness. At the beginning of the movie they just follow these white man's orders , which is very sus.

Another weird thing, is in a different movie Scaris City of Frights Cleo accidently destroys the whole village. Then Skelita (an indigenous based character) tells her to apologize to the tiki but instead Cloe is all like "Hah I dont apologize." then she manipulates the tiki into building a ship for her. That unnecessary scene just leaves a bad taste.

Honestly its sad how the tiki are always being manipulated. I think the media should stop using poc as mere plot devices.

6. Having a white character based off poc aesthetic

Monster high gave Jane Boolittle a jungle aesthetic. They state that she never knew her origins. Honestly I think they are trying to go for a Tarzan type of story. "Oh no us rich white people who decided to explore a jungle and brought our kid with us too..... for some odd reason ..... have had something tragic happen to us. Now our child is alone only to be raised by animals ahhhhwww." Later she gets adopted by another researcher/explorer. MH if you are gonna base a character on the "jungle aesthetic" maybe base it off ohh idk people who actually live in the jungle and not some rando white girl!!

I'm so tired of these stupid colonial based stories first with that werid white con-man in Skull Shores and now these white explorers!! I can't.

(Also Jane being a whole stalker is not cute. Her being a stalker endorses that behavior. A kid might see that and be like "wow she's stalking but that's okay because she's shy uwu. " pls never stalk anyone ever. )

If we ever cancel a Monster High character it should be Jane Boolittle.

7. "Race" jokes

I thought monster high was supposed to be about accepting people but the amount of times a monster from a different race has made a race joke on another monster is not even funny. The discrimination and horrible jokes Ghoulia had to hear right in front of her face is so sad. I think its honestly teaching kids to make/be tolerant with rasict jokes.

"Uhhhhhnnnhhhhng I'm a mummie"

For example when Duce made a joke on mummies doing" zombie motions". Like you got the wrong race and a inaccurate stereotype dummy. These writers were stupid. 😑

I dont think we should cancel MH just Jane Boolittle or anything like that. But if monster high comes back and they still haven't addressed/fixed these issues we should definitely fight them.💖

#monster high #MH #contraversy #racism #feel free to correct ny grammar #feel free to point out other sus things #not the grammar in the tags tho

[trainwreckphrases]

YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE TO CLAIM ABANDONED CONSIGNMENT BOX OF MONEY IN YOUR NAME VALUED TOTAL SUM OF

From: The Desk of Mr Mr. Tony A. Waltar

U.S. Customs and Border protection Enforcement

Office of Investigations SAC Offices

JFK International Airport,

Jamaica,Rd NY 11430 USA.

  To: Trainwreckphrases

 Attention My Dear,

                 My name is  Mr. Tony A. Waltar U.S customs senior inspections officer in-charged of inspecting all luggage's ,items arrived here in John Kennedy International Airport.

 Tony, Tony, my dear…  how do you keep your job? You can’t write a letter to save your life. Notes below in italics.

 I am contacting you in respect of your urgent assistance to receive in your door step one abandoned consignment trunk box of money valued the sum of $10 Million U.S Dollars

  Do me a favor. Take the money (10 mil should cover the cost right now- kind of a rip off if you ask me). Go back to school. We all have our struggles. Here you are, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Enforcement Agent, and your mastery of the basics of grammar and composition are is such dire need of help! The border you need to be policing is the one you are using to divide up and compose sentences.

 Be inform The said trunk Box contained the above amount was sent from  Africa country of origin  Nigeria to the United States secretly for safe keeping to be deposited in one of the Banks here in the States originally owned by one of the corrupt Government politicians.

 One free lesson. So, let’s start with sentences like the one you started with “Be inform.”

 I would correct it to

 “Be informed that the said trunk containing the above amount”

 Right now your tenses are out of aligment.

 It is like the old joke.

 A man goes to the doctor.

 He says “Doc, I am so stressed out! I’m a wigwam! I’m a teepee! I’m a wigwam! I’m a teepee!”

 The doctor says “You know what your problem is? Your two tents!”

 (the word “tents” sounds like “tense” and then “tense” means two things)

 The trunk box arrived John Kennedy International Airport NEW YORK with Egypt Air Line on 4th of March 2018 last year and was trapped and intercepted by my department immediately on arrival because the delivery diplomat Agent who conveyed the Box could not properly declared the trunk box to the customs as CASH rather he declared the consignment box as personal effects and after the trunk scanned it revealed an huge amount of dollars loaded inside the trunk .

 How do you “trap” and “intercept” a box? Does it move around of its own volition like a small animal?

 However to my greatest surprised immediately the Delivery Agent discovered that the TRUNK BOX had been exposed he escaped from the Airport since that 4th of March last year and could not come back to pick up the trunk box till this date his way about was above imagination he abandoned the trunk box since then and ran away and I had made several attempt to locate his way about which  was above  my imagination he is no way to be found.

 Nice job doubling down on TRUNK BOX. I get you really like that thing having two names, but I would suggest picking one. “Trunk” or “box”?

 Also, Tony my dear, where would we all be without imagination? There is this old song about a world of “pure imagination.” It is a world where trunk boxes move around on their own and people receive ten million dollars due to some sort of mix-up. 

 My dear if this deal find you interesting to work with me get this box deliver to your door step and share the Fund as agreed kindly without delay forward the following information's to enable me apply officially for the release of the box in favor of you as the next of kin to the former consignee/owner. Mrs Sheeryl D---- from Michigan.

  You also know Sheeryl? The one who spells her name with two “e”s? That is how you know it is her and not just some other Sheryl.

 Finally  I knew you might have been receiving SCAM Emails on daily basis from different people world wide but do not ignor this message

it is reality as a trial will convince you, consider this deal legit and real not scam therefore feel free and work with me get this deal done soonest.

 I read e-mails all day for a living, Tony. You are right. Many SCAM e-mails. On a daily basis.

 Treat Very Urgent and send your reply to my private Email thus :

 CLEARLYDONOTEMAILTHISPERSON at some commonly used e-mail host dot com

 Faithfully Yours

Mr. Tony A. Waltar

SENIOR INSPECTION CUSTOMS OFFICER

JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT NY U.S.A

 Last thing. Congrats on the new job! To go from one official position to another over the course of one letter is very impressive.

[cauloccoli]

Beginner’s Mind

I can think of a great many things in life at which I suck. 

Let’s see, there’s ...

Chess.

Snapping.

Volleyball. 

Remembering birthdays.

Small talk.

Boggle.

Because I wrangle words for a living, that last one might be a shocker. Shouldn’t someone like me be really good at word games? You know: Scrabble, Balderdash, crosswords, the spelling bee puzzle in the back of the NY Times ...

Yes, probably. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done an analysis of the skills used in word games vs. the skills required by any self-respecting writer. But speed, vocabulary, recall, and pattern recognition seem like a minimum viable skillset. So yes, I appear to be broken. Or unqualified. Or both. And here’s one more deficit that might matter: I don’t seem to have a competitive bone in my body! Was I #bornthatway, or did I go all PTSD after a middle school run-in with some mean girls? Oh, who the hell knows. 

Suffice to say that there are very many things at which I suck, but since I don’t view them through a competitive lens, I guess I’ve found ways to enjoy doing them anyway. Why pass up an experience in life just because I’m not Serena Williams or Peter Thiel or Haruki Murakami? Because even when you suck at something you can still enjoy it. For example, I find bowling and baking bread immensely satisfying, even though in my lifetime I seem never to have improved my success in either. 

But. Sucking just isn’t deemed adult: it’s undignified, scary, awkward for those watching. And I do suffer the small indignities of sucking. Most acute among these is the feeling that I’m insulting the very discipline in which I’m participating by including my feeble attempts at it. And nowhere is this more true, I’ve now discovered, than with speaking Spanish.

It’s been a year since we moved to Spain. Dave’s Spanish has been perfect since before we landed, of course. Felix was not far behind, and Javi had a little farther to go. But now, I’d say all three of them are fluent speakers.

Me ... not so much. 

Have I made progress? Sure. Absolutely. Living with Spanish-speakers before we came certainly introduced me to common phrases, and gave me a toddler-level vocabulary (heavy on the construction equipment and animals.) But I didn’t know any grammar. I couldn’t conjugate anything outside the present tense. I didn’t even know how to spell. For all this stuff, it has really helped to crack a book and drill, baby drill. I’m even dancing with the subjunctive a little.

But the hardest part, and arguably the most important part of learning a language, is speaking it. To really learn to speak a language, you have to interact with other humans. You have to listen — really hard. You have to anticipate what people might say, and how you might respond. You have to keep up: you can’t linger over words you don’t recognize, or stop the other speakers more than a few times to ask for explanations. You WILL be forced to nod along, even when you have no idea what’s being discussed, and you will get busted when you laugh at inappropriate moments. You will make ridiculous grammatical mistakes that make you sound like an idiot. And the next day, you will have to go out and do it all again. 

If you’re an introvert then you know how mortifying it is to make small talk in your native language — much less one that comes with a built-in awkwardness feature. You know what it’s like to see your neighbor in the grocery store and duck behind the apples because small talk, even with people you like, feels like work. 

So you can imagine what it feels like to walk out into the foreign-language-speaking world every day and deliberately seek out conversations with people knowing that your words are probably wrong, or funny-sounding, even as you hear them coming out of your mouth; feeling like you’re wasting people’s time as you silently search your tired old brain for the right word, and become paralyzed by your internal debate about whether to use es or está, chastising yourself all the way home for choosing wrongly and knowing better.

Wait, wha? Do other people not feel this way? Are there really people who don’t have this self-flagellating inner dialogue while speaking another tongue, people who just ... roll with it?

A study last year found that people speak a foreign language better when they’ve consumed alcohol in moderate doses. That’s certainly not a problem for me here, where folks crack their first beers at 11 AM and prefer wine to water. But I don’t want to fuel myself on liquid courage. I just wish I could silence the anxious voices no one else can hear. It definitely has gotten easier in the last year. Part of it is being an old lady who gives fewer effs about what other people think, and part of it is obeying the voice that tells me to choose being in the flow over being correct. 

In software people sometimes talk about "beginner's mind". I think it’s supposed to mean that you have an attitude of openness and receptiveness to learning, free from bias and assumptions; that you’re focused on experience over excellence. But how many of us really practice beginner’s mind IRL? When was the last time you gave yourself, as an adult, permission to not know WTF you’re doing? If we never suck at anything, could that mean we’re not trying new things? If we only do things we’re good at, are we depriving our kids of the chance to learn how we accept failure? 

I know that no amount of studying will improve my Spanish as much as getting out in the streets and speaking it. I have to let go of all the embarrassment, pride, shyness, and mental red pens. I have to believe that the sucking really doesn’t matter to anyone except me. And then I have to ask myself whether it really matters at all. Because in the end, there’s only one way to arrive at the point where you don’t suck at something. 

Poco a poco.

(image via)